Is the Easter Story Legend or Myth? Part III

“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day…and that he appeared…”  (1 Corinthians 15:3-5)

The passage just cited includes the two words, “delivered” and “received.”  The Apostle Paul is here noting that the passage found in 1 Corinthians 15:3b-8 (I encourage you to read the entire section), is not his own words.  He is instead passing on to his readers what amounts to a credal statement that he received from the Christian community as a whole.  This statement concerning Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection was already in circulation when Paul chose to incorporate it into his own letter.  There are two matters of importance here.  First, the central message of Christianity right from the very beginning revolved around these three words (themes).  Second, this passage is dated between three and five years after Jesus’ crucifixion.  This time frame is assumed not (only) by fundamentalist Christians, but by a body of radical skeptical scholars (the “Jesus Seminar”) who deny the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead (Robert Funk, ed.  The Acts of Jesus: What Did Jesus Really Do? (Polebridge, 1982), p.454)).  Indeed, this is the broadly agreed upon time frame across New Testament scholarship.

It is important to recognize that the 3-5-year time-frame just cited does not mean that this was the date when the resurrection stories were invented.  It means instead that documentable evidence for a publically-agreed upon creed was already in broad circulation by that time.  Three to five years is how amazingly close in time we can approach concrete, primary documentation for Christian belief about Jesus resurrection from the dead.  The so-called gap in time between the alleged event (the resurrection) and widely-held conviction about that event is utterly without parallel in ancient history.  There is absolutely no reason to think that within the remaining tiny gap of time that the story of Easter was invented out of nothing.

I wish to separate the question of legend from myth for reasons that I will explain in future blogs.  But for the present I include quotations from literary scholars, who treat both together, who argue that legendary development does not happen immediately.  To the contrary, it is documented to take generations. Consider the following:

“”The agnostic type of form-criticism would be much more credible if the compilation of the Gospels were much later in time than can be the case…Heroditus enables us to test the tempo of myth-making, [showing that] even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic core.”  (A.N. Sherwin-White. Roman Law and Roman Society in the New Testament. (Oxford, 1962), p.189,90).

“Myth is usually characterized by remoteness in time and space…as having taken place long ago.”  The Gospels by contrast concern “an event that had a particular definite location in Palestine…under Pontius Pilate, only a generation or so before the New Testament account of these happenings.”  (John Macquarie. God Talk: An Examination of the Language and Logic of Theology. (Harper and Row, 1967), p.177, 180). 

 

In the last blog I laid out the decisively strong arguments for dating the close of virtually the entire New Testament within 35 years of Jesus’ public ministry.  Within this time frame a significant portion of the population of Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem, many of whom were hostile to the Jesus’ message, had access to the body of evidence surrounding Jesus of Nazareth.  Opportunities abounded to cross-examine the witnesses and explore the actual facts of the case.  Motivation was strong and prevalent for opponents to find means to undermine the Christian movement.  Therefore the weight of evidence points away from assertions that the Gospels are legend.  They stand up for these reasons as trustworthy historical testimony to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus’ resurrection within history.